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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23021593">His Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister'>GretchenSinister</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Guardians of Childhood &amp; Related Fandoms, Rise of the Guardians (2012)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Far Future, Fluff, Multi, eldritch guardians</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:13:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23021593</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Original Prompt: "any pairing, Jack has a nice day and things go well.</p><p>There’s so much angst on this</p><p>I need something to counter that</p><p>Free-for-all fluff</p><p>Go wild"</p><p>When a prompt says to go wild, I usually end up writing something in the Apotheosis AU, and this is no exception. Set long, long after Apotheosis, in the new world. The names are a little different and it’s the OT8 rather than the OT6 now, because I forgot what I had established as canon in the Apotheosis AU. </p><p>Anyway: Autumn begins, Jack has joy in it, and so do all the others.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>E. Aster Bunnymund/Jack Frost/Katherine/Nightlight/Nicholas St. North/Pitch Black/Sandy/Toothiana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>RotG Polyamory Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>His Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/30/2016.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>My time again!</em> A soundless shout echoed through the world in cold breezes and startled leaves into giving up all their green. The leaves fell and dried and curled and when the people stepped on them their crunching reminded them of laughter.<br/><br/><em>My time, my time, my time!</em> Delicate panes of crystal clear ice swept across puddles and rain barrels and animal troughs and ponds, and every day the sunlight let it glitter longer before melting it for the next night’s work. Filigrees of frost grew on glass and metal and stone and leaves, and shadows lovingly sheltered them all day.<br/><br/><em>Year turn to me, year turn to me!</em> And it was all just as it had been since the beginning, and the people all knew it deep in their bones and felt a comfort in the chill, bringing out their knitted clothes and quilts with smiles, touching the stitches and the patches and remembering the love of making and the happy use of such things.<br/><br/><em>Join me, join me, joy and me, joy and me!</em> And all the work that started in spring came to fruition, the harvest heavy and hearty, the love letters of buds and blossoms and sprouts now answered in swelling fruits of every shade.<br/><br/><em>My time and your time, my time and your time!</em> And before the ice or frost could last all day, before the heavy snows of midwinter, the storms came, the awesome, wondrous storms with thunder like friendly sparring between giants, with lightning zipping and arcing through it all as if it had been waiting for such a chance to play all year.<br/><br/><em>Tell all, tell all, it’s my time, my time!</em> “Yes, it’s his time now,” the people said. “Whose time?” asked the children. And the people did not know, not in the way they knew how to build a house or bake a loaf of bread, but they knew by stories, by all the old and growing stories, by all the shoots of stories nurtured everywhere, in all lands. And they said, in many ways, “Jack Frost.”<br/><br/></p><hr/><p><br/><br/>The Drowned Boy was the wind and then he was in the wind. With a great whoop he first used his newly-formed lungs, and laughed and laughed and laughed as he spun in the wind to see once again his simple clothes and simple skin, still the same after uncountable ages, after journeys across unfathomable gulfs, after an end and a beginning. He laughed with all the joy that he ever was and would be ever, and called out to the others to join him as the wind carried him swiftly to the Autumn House.<br/><br/>The Autumn House stood alone in the woods, a tall and sturdy eye in a brilliant hurricane of fall colors. As the Drowned Boy approached, he saw smoke already rising from the chimney and drew a loop in the air in happiness. That sign could only mean the Craftsman was already there, the Craftsman who had held onto his body until the very end and slipped back into it so easily. He would no doubt be going through the house now, doing the dear, unnecessary work of preparing it for the Drowned Boy and the others, as if he couldn’t say that the linens would be fresh and the rooms warm and aired and they would be.<br/><br/>Ah, but he would leave all that aside once the Drowned Boy arrived! And wasn’t he taking just as many unnecessary actions, flying through the air to the house even though he was impatient to see the others as they were at the Autumn House? The cold wind slipped by him and he grinned, thinking of the Craftsman’s tall, strong, broad frame. Oh, the Drowned Boy may have lost his body long, long ago, but it was so, so good to put it back on, to have the chance to embrace the others with a form fragile and limited and bounded, yes, but also warm and solid and so easily, so happily overwhelmed.<br/><br/>The Drowned Boy landed lightly before the House, his house, its form a memory of another world, another time. He climbed the front steps and walked onto the broad, wraparound porch. He smiled and paused before the door with its oak-leaf patterned window, savoring the last few moments of anticipation before he took on his second-oldest name, before he called for the Craftsman with the first name he had known him by. He stood there just long enough for three more leaves to fall, then knocked on the door and opened it. “North! I’m here!”<br/><br/></p><hr/><p><br/><br/>They had hardly broken their first embrace when the Storyteller and the Protector knocked and entered, crossing the threshold as Katherine and Nightlight, hand-in-hand. The Memory Keeper and Hope-of-Spring arrived soon after, and everyone exclaimed in joy to have the chance to touch Tooth’s feathers and Bunny’s fur again.<br/><br/>“The season looks beautiful this year,” Tooth said, before leaning forward and giving Jack a lingering kiss.<br/><br/>“The harvest is good, too,” Bunny said, as he nuzzled Jack’s neck. “Almost seems like we’re getting along, doesn’t it?” Jack laughed breathlessly, and Tooth went to kiss Katherine.<br/><br/>“It always seems that way until we meet on the Spring Fields,” Jack said.<br/><br/>Nightlight stepped close, kissed Jack’s cheek, and winked at him and Bunny. “Somehow you always seem to work things out there, too.”<br/><br/>“True enough,” Bunny said, slipping his hands under Jack’s shirt and making him squirm.<br/><br/>“Ah, before we get carried away,” North said, breaking his kiss with Tooth but still holding her, and Katherine, close, “we know we are still waiting for Pitch and Sandy, and there is a feast for us—”<br/><br/></p><hr/><p><br/><br/>The Shining One and the Dark One knocked on the door just in time for apple pie and ice cream. <em>arethearethe bodies rightgoodreadyuseful?</em> they asked, and then, slowly, “Are the bodies right?”<br/><br/>“They look like they are so far,” Jack said, and embraced Sandy’s short, round form and Pitch’s tall, skeletal one. They gave him sweet, sticky kisses and Jack laughed and held them closer. “Thank you for doing this,” he whispered to ears that still didn’t have ear holes. He knew they’d be able to hear him, anyway.<br/><br/>“Love you,” said Pitch, signed Sandy.<br/><br/>As if that was all there was to say, all that was needed to get beings that had long forgotten their original physical forms, if they had even had them, to take on familiar humanlike shapes just to indulge Jack. As if those words made it any less astonishing that the beings that had forced Jack to realize his body was gone, told him it was unnecessary, now understood how much corporeality meant to Jack and worked so hard and so long to make good, working bodies when Jack called. Jack felt his eyes well with happiness, not for the first time and not for the last.<br/><br/>“We all do,” said Katharine, leaving her seat to join Jack, Sandy, and Pitch’s hug. “Happy Autumn, Jack.”<br/><br/>“We’re always so glad to hear your call,” Tooth said. “To know that we’re going to feel time passing with you, to share a table with you, to be near and together with you and everyone, even if we’re in forms that could so easily feel lonely.”<br/><br/>“Wouldn’t bear it without you,” Pitch said, and Sandy kissed him, then Jack again.<br/><br/>Jack laughed softly, and looked around at everyone else. “Happy Autumn to all of you, too, then,” he said. He grinned wider and gave Pitch and Sandy an extra squeeze. “Now, let’s go upstairs and see what else makes physical bodies worth it.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments from Tumblr:</p><p>sylphidine reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:<br/>I'mnotcryingIhavesomethinginmyeye :::sob::: #too sweet too pure so many feeeeeeeeeels</p></blockquote></div></div>
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